After the war, she was renamed USAT Sherman and was fitted for service in the Pacific, supporting U.S. bases in Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines.

In addition to her regular supply missions, she transported American troops to several conflicts in the Pacific, including the Philippine Insurrection, Boxer Rebellion, the 1911 Revolution in China, and the Siberian Intervention of World War I.

The Atlantic Transport Line commissioned four sisterships to be built by the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

[3] While the Atlantic Transport Line was controlled by American shipping magnate Bernard N. Baker, its operations were run from Britain.

[9] Since facilities for transporting cattle also supported other livestock, Mobile occasionally shipped horses,[10][11] and even deer[12] across the Atlantic.

At the time, the United States had few overseas possessions, and thus its military had limited ocean-capable sealift to support such an offensive.

[14] Army Colonel Frank J. Hecker approached the Atlantic Transport Line to charter its fleet, and was refused.

He then offered to buy the vessels he sought and a deal was struck, subject to the approval of the Secretary of War Russel Alger.

In addition to Mobile, the Atlantic Transport Line sold Manitoba, Mohawk, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, and Minnewaska.

[17] Her return to the mainland after her first trip to the Caribbean was widely criticized in the press for significant overcrowding, spoiled food, and lack of care for the sick and wounded.

[18] Perhaps the bad press stung, for Mobile did not sail again until she was overhauled at the William Cramps and Sons shipyard in Philadelphia and personally inspected by Secretary of War Alger.

Sherman carried about 100 wounded soldiers and Brigadier General Harrison Gray Otis, who had commanded a brigade of Army troops against the insurgent Philippine forces.

Adding urgency to moving troops and supplies to Asia was the United States involvement in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900.

[71] She languished in port, but when the strike was settled, her decks were rebuilt, the number of staterooms was increased, her medical facilities were improved, lavoratories expanded, and a new ice house was built .

[91] In December 1902 Sherman struck a rock in San Bernardino Strait which punched a hole in her port bow below the waterline.

[94] Quick repairs were made at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard[95] and Sherman sailed for Manila on 17 May,[96] albeit without about 1,000 tons of cargo which were lost in the fire.

[97] On 22 June 1909, just before the new Federal government fiscal year began, a contract was signed with Union Iron Works for $314,000 of repairs.

[98] She resumed her regular route through the Pacific, running from San Francisco to Honolulu, Guam, Manila, Nagasaki, and back again, on 5 April 1910, after more than a year out of commission.

Sherman had nothing but her standard wireless telegraphy equipment on board, so she repeated the voice message back in morse code to prove that she had received it.

[100] The Army Transport Service leased wharfage and warehouse space on the Folsom Street Pier in San Francisco and this is where Sherman most often moored when she was loading or unloading.

In 1903, as the Army's commitments in the Pacific became clear, it decided to develop its own, larger facility at Fort Mason.

Sherman was the first Army transport to dock at the new piers at Fort Mason when she arrived in San Francisco on 6 January 1912.

[105] The revolutionary Bolshevik government of Russia made a separate peace with the Central Powers in March 1918, ending Russian participation in World War I.

In July 1918, President Wilson agreed to send U.S. troops to Siberia as part of an Allied Expeditionary Force to safeguard American interests threatened by Russia's withdrawal from the war.

[106] During 1918 and 1919 Sherman sailed a triangular route between San Francisco, Vladivostok, and Manila, with her usual intermediate stops in Hawaii, and Guam.

[112] The ship then made a single round trip to Antwerp, notable for carrying a part of the 1920 U.S. Olympic Team in both directions.

[117] Given the glut of more modern troopships built during World War I, it made little sense for the Army to maintain the thirty-year-old Sherman.

[126] From California to Hawaii freight ran the gamut from new cars for auto dealers, airplanes for the Navy, cement, asphalt, pipe, tile, grain, oranges, live quail, mail, and much more besides.

The location department of Warner Brothers took advantage of the gap in her sailings to charter the ship for six days of shooting for the movie One Way Passage, starring William Powell and Kay Francis.

Both companies competed for passengers and freight between California and Hawaii, raising the possibility of cost cutting consolidation as the Great Depression deepened.